Getty Museum

Goblet (Kelchpokal)

Date

1540–1560

Medium

Free- and mold-blown colorless (purplish-gray) glass with gilding

Culture

Austrian

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

Although the Venetians tried to protect their monopoly of colorless *cristallo* (crystal) glass, issuing orders and threatening terrible punishments to workers who emigrated to the North, the manufacture of this glass spread to many parts of Europe in the 1500s. Consumers all over Europe coveted the colorless *cristallo,* as it reproduced the brilliance and clarity of precious rock crystal. In 1534 in Hall, Austria, Emperor Ferdinand I opened one of the earliest glasshouses producing *façon de Venise* glass in northern Europe. Wolfgang Vitl ran the workshop, employing both Venetian glassblowers and local craftsmen. Vitl and his successor Sebastian Höchstetter produced vessels that were larger and sturdier than genuine Venetian products but still Italianate in shape. Venetian vessels from half a century earlier influenced this goblet's form, but its pattern-molded body and knop are typical of mid-sixteenth-century Hall. This vessel probably originally had a cover, which is now missing.

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